43 Sermon Illustrations on Art

Discusses the religious life of artist van Gogh. He was an impoverished

missionary to the miners in Belgium. The mission society cut off his aid and

he turned against the church. In his insanity he had religious visions with

frightful portents. He committed suicide soon after.

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Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the famous 19th-century poet and artist, was once approached by an elderly man. The old fellow had some sketches and drawings that he wanted Rossetti to look at and tell him if they were any good, or if they at least showed potential talent.

Rossetti looked them over carefully. After the first few, he knew that they were worthless, showing not the least sign of artistic talent. But Rossetti was a kind man, and he told the elderly man as gently as possible that the pictures were without much value and showed little talent. He was sorry, but he could not lie to the man.

The visitor was disappointed, but seemed to expect Rossetti’s judgment. He then apologized for taking up Rossetti’s time, but would he just look at a few more drawings — these done by a young art student?

Rossetti looked over the second batch of sketches and immediately became enthusiastic over the talent they revealed. “These,” he said, “oh, these are good. This young student has great talent. He should be given every help and encouragement in his career as an artist. He has a great future if he will work hard and stick to it.”

Rossetti could see that the old fellow was deeply moved. “Who is this fine young artist?” he asked. “Your son?”

“No,” said the old man sadly. “It is me — 40 years ago. If only I had heard your praise then! For you see, I got discouraged and gave up — too soon.”

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Anonymous, From Brian Cavanaugh’s The Sower’s Seeds, from A 4th Course of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Copyright 1997 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Hanoch McCarty & Meladee McCarty

When curators at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York arranged a new exhibit called "Sensation," they probably didn't know how prophetic the title would prove to be.

For the exhibit has indeed caused a sensation. It features so-called "shock art," and examples include sharks and pigs preserved in formaldehyde and the bust of a man made from his own frozen blood.

Most shocking of the shock art exhibits is a work by Chris Ofili that features a portrait of the Virgin Mary smeared with elephant feces and surrounded by photographs of human sexual organs.

This latest example of sacrilege masquerading as art enraged New York religious leaders -- as well as prominent Catholic New Yorker, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Giuliani called the exhibit "sick stuff," and demanded that the picture of Mary be removed from the exhibit. To give teeth to his demand, Giuliani threatened to withhold $7 million the museum receives annually from the city, and also to terminate the museum's lease and even seize control of the museum.

Not surprisingly, the city's cultural elites, led by the New York Times, have sided with the museum. As the Times' editors wrote, "public financing of the arts cannot be a pretext for government censorship, not on behalf of Roman Catholics or anyone else."

But Giuliani counters, "You don't have a right to a government subsidy for desecrating somebody else's religion."

The museum board has voted to sue Giuliani on First Amendment grounds, and, sadly, will probably prevail. The current state of the law favors the museum.

As Christians, we should support the arts because we know God created a world of beauty, and that artistic skill is a gift from Him. Yet this case illustrates again why public funding of art is a bad idea.

Until the early twentieth century, the art world accepted the Christian view that art is a way of representing transcendent ideals such as truth, goodness, and beauty. Whether it was Grecian urns, the Mona Lisa, or impressionist landscapes, art sought to portray themes of beauty and truth.

Then, earlier in century, artists began to abandon these ideals. Art became a political tool aimed at shocking the sensibilities of the bourgeoisie. As a result, our artistic establishment no longer believes that there's any difference between the Mona Lisa and smears of elephant dung. Both are equally valid artistic expressions. This is the heart of the problem.

That brings us to the question of public funding of art. You see, once the government decides to fund art, it cannot discriminate on the basis of viewpoint. That's why I'm afraid the mayor will lose his battle.

As a result, the only way to prevent taxpayer subsidies for sacrilegious art and other "sick stuff" is to end ALL subsidies for art.

Now, when Christians object to exhibits like this, people always call us "anti-art" -- a false accusation. What we object to is being forced to fund artists and exhibits that have striped art of its historical definition.

If your neighbors accuse you of being a "philistine" for objecting to sacrilege masquerading as art, set them straight about what's really happening with that sensational exhibit in New York.

It's one that substitutes frozen blood and elephant dung for truth, goodness and beauty -- that is, for REAL art.

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Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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The neighbors watched the new church building go up in just one month — and what a sight it was! The church was a squat, square building made of unrelieved concrete. On the inside was garish red carpeting. A massive parking lot surrounded the church.

Nothing could possibly have been uglier — and the fact that so many Christians build church structures like this reveals how far Christians have strayed from the place beauty and art are meant to have in our lives.

As the late Francis Schaeffer notes in his book, ART AND THE BIBLE, we evangelicals tend to relegate art to the fringes of life. Despite our talk about the lordship of God in every aspect of life, we have narrowed its scope to a very small part of reality. But the arts are also supposed to be under the lordship of Christ, Schaeffer reminds us. Christians ought to use the arts “as things of beauty to the praise of God.”

This is exactly what God commanded regarding the building of His Tabernacle. As Schaeffer says, “God commanded Moses to fashion a tabernacle in a way [that] would involve almost every form of representational art that men have ever known.” In Exodus 25, for example, God instructs Moses to make for the Holy of Holies “two cherubim of gold; of beaten work shalt thou make them.”

In other words, God was commanding that works of art be made: a statuary representation of angels.

Outside the Holy of Holies, lampstands were to be placed — that is, candlesticks of pure gold, decorated with representations of nature: almond blossoms and flowers.

And then we have the descriptions of the priestly garments. Upon their skirts were to be designed pomegranates of blue, purple, and scarlet.

Does God value beauty for beauty’s sake? It seems He does. Consider the two columns Solomon set up before the Temple. He decorated them with a hundred pomegranates fastened upon chains, as God commanded. These two free-standing columns supported no architectural weight and had no engineering significance, Schaeffer writes. “They were there only because God said they should be there as a thing of beauty.”

And this brings us back to those ugly church buildings we often build. No wonder non-Christians often remark on the ugliness of our churches — an ugliness that is off-putting to anyone sensitive to beauty. We have forgotten that beauty is not achieved, as some argue, just to draw people into the church, but because it is a form of praise to the God who designed and created magnificent mountains, delicate flowers, and our beautiful children.

No doubt you have seen churches that have crossed the line from beautiful to garish, where opulence is more valued than true beauty. Indeed, historically, the Protestant reaction to opulent church furnishings was to seek beauty in simplicity. And that is fine too. But every congregation, no matter how small its budget, should ensure that its facilities, humble though they may be — and in some parts of the world, they are very, very primitive — nonetheless, are tasteful and reflect the beauty of the Creator.

The God we worship glories in beauty.

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Copyright (c) 2008 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #92]

A small rock band commemorated the anniversary of September 11th with a controversial concert they called “Hit Another Tower.” One band member justified their work saying, “We believe there is nothing so serious that you can't laugh about it.” [1]

Other artistic controversy emerged recently when a sculpture depicting a woman with flailing arms and legs was placed on exhibit. The artist said his work was meant to honor those who jumped from the World Trade Center. Onlookers were so disturbed, it was quickly removed.

I cannot think of a place where the lines of moral law are more vague and our inner need for these lines more heightened than in the realms of personal expression. Achievement in culture and civilization is defined by man's unique capacity to create and discern beauty, to express and utilize wisdom, virtue, and power. But we fail to remember that wrong use of these capacities is the defining trademark of evil throughout history.

Reinhold Niebuhr once stated, “The destructiveness in human life is primarily the consequence of exceeding, not the bounds of nature, but much more the ultimate limits… There are such limits, because man is a creature as well as creator.” [2] Fifty years have past since Niebuhr penned these words and yet they couldn't be more appropriate for today. We flaunt the freedom to create, all the while choosing to forget our Creator. But unbound by moral law, even our own heart's expression can lead to destruction.

In his novel Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky masterfully captures a heart wrestling with the lines of beauty. He writes, “Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom... The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.” [3]

Only through a moral framework are we reminded of the sanctity of beauty, the sanctity of time, the sanctity of the word, the sanctity of life. When you desacralize these things, destruction entails. What contradiction is to reason, evil is to life.

But in God there is no contradiction, and emerging from Him is that indestructible law. To all perfections there is a limit, says the Psalmist, but the law of God is boundless. (Psalm 119:96) You see, God has made us to create, giving us all the freedoms for the design with which He fashioned us; but creatures, that we might find our reason for being in that moral framework with which He framed us.

Dear friends, may you know beauty and truth not in abstract expressions but personally — in the splendor of Jesus Christ.

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1. Wall Street Opinion Journal, “Rock group issues call to Hit Another Tower.” September 13, 2002. www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/13/1031608303822.html

2. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952.

3. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

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Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #12464

On February 4, the White House announced that New York artist Makoto Fujimura was appointed by President Bush to the National Council on the Arts for a six-year term. Perhaps it's the worldview behind his art that caught the president's attention. Working in his studio three blocks from Ground Zero, Fujimura was deeply impacted by the horrific events of September 11, and it caused him to challenge the artistic community to see the reality of our broken state of existence.

Fujimura says, “Art cannot be divorced from faith, for to do so is to literally close our eyes to that beauty of the dying sun setting all around us. Death spreads all over our lives, and therefore, faith must be given to see through the darkness, to see through the beauty of the valley of the shadow of death ... Everyone has a Ground Zero to face.”

Reflecting on his own conversion, he said, “I remember how I used to look at the landscape everyday on my way to work, not believing what I saw was true or able to trust my own vision. I realized after my conversion that there was reality [grounded in Christ that] I could trust, and that I could also trust what was inside of me to express it. Reality is the foundation of creativity, and any artist who is honest has to make that assumption.” Coming from Japan with a Christian population of less than one percent, the worldview shift in his art was radically countercultural and obvious to both his admirers and critics.

For Fujimura, art can be best understood in the context of the Incarnation. In the Lord's Supper, ordinary substances become sacred. The immanent becomes transcendent. If God became man and humbled Himself, this incarnational principle can be applied to every act of creativity, and therefore, the results of artistic creation can become sacred. And this is the theological understanding that flows through Fujimura's work.

Makoto works in Nihonga -- a medieval Japanese technique of painting using minerals. His works are painted in layers of mineral paints that become transparent over time, revealing the layers below.

When asked by art critic James Romaine how this technique relates to his faith, he said, “The underlying worldview of Japanese art is cyclical, and yet the technique lends itself to this notion that there is a beginning and an end.” There is history and story in the painting as this hand-made paint is applied to hand-made paper. “There is this rich fabric of story being woven as you work. That is something that is very significant to me, as I am someone who has come to understand that my worldview is a premise that allows for these stories to come alive. That understanding of the world or looking at yourself, as having a history, is very biblical. Because there is a beginning and an end, there is resolution; even in death itself, there is this purpose.”

As a contemporary artist, creatively embracing and painting his way through the wreckage of September 11, Fujimura is an example of a Christian effectively using art as a vehicle to show us reality: its depravity and brokenness, but also the hope of restoration that the Great Artist Himself, incarnate in Christ, brings to all things.

FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION

To learn more about this fascinating contemporary artist, visit Makoto Fujimura's website. http://www.makotofujimura.com Read his interview with James Romaine. http://www.makotofujimura.com/essays/faith_and_art1.html

Learn more about the National Council on the Arts. http://arts.endow.gov/learn/NCA/About_NCA.html

Both of these books from Square Halo include interviews with various artists, including Fujimura: Ned Bustard, ed., IT WAS GOOD: MAKING ART TO THE GLORY OF GOD (2000),

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Copyright (c) 2003 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #11881]

Gallery statistics report that the average time a person spends looking at a particular work of art is three seconds. I imagine to those who spend their lives caring for the great art museums of world, this is a disheartening sight. It would have been interesting to hear the thoughts of the St. Petersburg curators who watched as Henri Nouwen sat before Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal Son for more than four hours.

But isn't this a telling illustration of life? How often we are like the three-second viewers, moving through our days with our eyes barely open. We are surrounded by the presence of God, but unaware and unseeing — missing, in our absence, the bigger picture. One of the most powerful poems I have ever read begins, “Lord, not you, it is I who am absent.”

The parable of the prodigal son is often viewed as a story that meets the experience of those who have wandered from God in belief, in life, in obedience. It is often a story that powerfully defines a particular time in our lives, a momentous time of returning to faith, a time when we remember God's grace personally and powerfully. But perhaps it is also a parable that meets us in the daily struggle to see, to be present, to be conscious of the presence of God in this place.

The parable tells us that the wayward child had a plan for returning to his father's house. He would confess his sin against heaven and against his father and then ask to be treated as one of the hired servants. He would work his way back into his father's life. But the father doesn't even give him a chance to fully present the offer. Upon seeing his son, the father says to his slaves, “'Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ And they began to celebrate” (Luke 15:22-25). With the symbols of restoration, the father wholly embraces the son who was lost.

Gripped by the intensity of the massive painting before him, Nouwen found himself becoming “more and more part of the story that Jesus once told and Rembrandt once painted.” Yet in Rembrandt's painting we do not find the father's eager rushing out to greet his wayward son as described in the Gospel of Luke. Rather, we find stillness. We find the parable's characters at rest. Rembrandt slows our flickering minds to the scene that captures a thousand words for our daily walk in faith. “Lord, not you, it is I who am absent.” The son has returned; he kneels before his father in his ragged shoes and torn clothes, as he is: the one who insisted upon defining himself apart from his father, the one who was absent. As the son was in pursuit of life beyond his father, he lost sight of life itself. It is in seeing himself as he is, that the son also sees the father more clearly.

In the parable of the prodigal son Jesus reminds us that our heavenly father grieves over our wandering hearts and minds, moving in grace to embrace those who long to see. He is the God who runs to greet his child. He is the God who is there.

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Copyright © 2004 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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Similar story by Rev. Brett Blair:

In 1986 Henri Nouwen, a French theologian and writer, toured St. Petersburg, Russia, the former Leningrad. While there he visited the famous Hermitage where he saw, among other things, Rembrandt's painting of the Prodigal Son. The painting was in a hallway and received the natural light of a nearby window. Nouwen stood for two hours, mesmerized by this remarkable painting. As he stood there the sun changed, and at every change of the light's angle he saw a different aspect of the painting revealed. He would later write: “There were as many paintings in the Prodigal Son as there were changes in the day.”

It is difficult for us to see something new in the parable of the Prodigal son. We have heard the story so many times we believe that we have squeezed it dry of meaning. Not only that, but, as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. When we hear the opening words of the parable once again, “And there was a Father who had two sons,” we greet the words with ho-hum. Heard it. Heard it. Heard it.

Yet, I would suggest that just as Henri Nouwen saw a half dozen different facets to Rembrandt's painting of the Prodigal Son, so too are there many different angles to the story itself.

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Staff, www.eSermons.com, March, 2001

How do you write the “political history” of a piece of music? The idea isn't as farfetched as you might think. Music professor Esteban Buch did just that in his book BEETHOVEN'S NINTH: A POLITICAL HISTORY. And it's an intriguing, thought-provoking history.

Beethoven's magnificent setting of the ODE TO JOY (the tune to the hymn, “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee”) appeals to people everywhere — and it seems to mean something different to each one. One could argue that people love the symphony simply because of the lyrics that celebrate universal brotherhood, the beauty and emotion of the music, and the inspiring story of the man who overcame his deafness to compose it.

But Buch thinks there's more to it than that. He writes, “The career of the ODE TO JOY ... can be read as a fable on the moral value of Western art. All who have invoked the Ninth Symphony have begun by experiencing its beauty and ended with the need for its morality; because they revered the Beautiful and because they believed that they knew the Good, they have made that Beautiful the symbol of the Good.”

But as Buch goes on to explain, there's one small problem: Everybody has a different idea of what GOOD means. Thus, “the communists hear in [the Ninth Symphony] the gospel of a classless world, Catholics hear the Gospel itself, democrats hear it as the voice of democracy. Hitler celebrated his birthdays with the ODE TO JOY, and yet the same music was used to oppose him, even in concentration camps. ... It was the anthem of the racist Republic of Rhodesia, and it is today the anthem of the European Union.” Lenin even said that Beethoven's music was dangerous because it made him want to be kinder to his fellow human beings!

There's an important lesson here. As I've said before, we need art to inspire and educate and delight us, to train our imaginations and open our minds, even to point us toward God. But even the most inspiring art cannot take the place of faith.

Many of the nineteenth-century Romantics made the mistake of replacing belief in God with belief in art. People do it today. Art was to be the new god, raising humanity to a whole new level. Sadly, the century that followed dashed their hopes. It turned out that the art that was to make us all moral human beings could easily be used by evil men for their purposes. Instead of changing their hearts, it was twisted to promote their own perverted concept of goodness.

The Romantic view of great works like Beethoven's Ninth, elevating faith in mankind above faith in God, ultimately leads to pessimism and despair. Beethoven biographer Maynard Solomon wrote, “If we lose the ‘dream' of the Ninth Symphony, we will have nothing left to balance against the crushing terrors of modern civilization.” But that's only true if there is no god higher than Beethoven — a notion the composer himself clearly understood. It's only when art is seen with a proper perspective — as a reflection of the glory of God, not as a god in itself — that it can truly inspire and uplift us.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Esteban Buch, Beethoven's Ninth: A Political History, translated by Richard Miller (University of Chicago Press, 2003).

• Ivan Hewett, “Universal song,” New Statesman, 7 July 2003.

• Jan Swafford, “The Beethoven Mystery,” Slate, 30 June 2003. This article contains several links to clips from the Berlin Philharmonic's 1963 recording of the Ninth Symphony.

• Associated Press, “Final manuscript of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony brings $3.47M,” Charleston Post and Courier, 23 May 2003.

• Peter Adam, “Bach and Beethoven: grappling with God's will,” Melbourne Anglican, April 2003.

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040219, “Idolizing Art: Honoring the Created above the Creator.”

• James M. Kushiner, Creed & Culture: A Touchstone Reader (ISI Books, 2003).

• The BreakPoint “Christians in the Arts“ kit includes It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God by Ed Bustard (editor), William Edgar, Makoto Fujimura, and David Giardinieare (Square Halo Books, 2000), and Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts by Steve Turner (InterVarsity Press, 2001). Both are great resources for Christians involved or interested in the arts.

• Visit BreakPoint's Christians in the Arts page for more resources and links. Also visit the Wilberforce Forum page on the arts.

• Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live? (Tyndale, 1999). See especially chapters 41-45.

• Patrick Kavanaugh, Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers (Zondervan, 1996 edition).

• Russell Martin, Beethoven's Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Scientific Mystery Solved (Random House, 2001).

• Jan Swafford, “Speed Freaks Do Bach,” Slate, 5 September 2003.

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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In the mid-1990s in Iran, Professor Azar Nafisi committed an act of subversion against the oppressive Islamic regime. She started a reading group.

As Nafisi recounts in her book READING Lolita IN TEHRAN, after being driven out of the university where she had taught literature for many years, she began to teach female students in her own home. For two years, her group met once a week to read and discuss literature, mostly “forbidden” Western classics like THE GREAT GATSBY, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, and the novels of Henry James and Vladimir Nabokov. In these sessions, the women found the kind of freedom and hope that eluded them everywhere else.

Nafisi writes, “The novels were an escape from reality in the sense that we could marvel at their beauty and perfection, and leave aside our stories about the deans and the university and the morality squads in the streets. ... Curiously, the novels we escaped into led us finally to question and prod our own realities, about which we felt so helplessly speechless.” The books they read were nothing like the reading material approved by the Islamic regime, narrow-minded reflections of a brutal ideology. Instead, these books brought the real world to them and helped them gain insight and perspective.

In particular, reading taught these women the virtue of empathy. If the chief sin of their oppressors was to judge people unfairly, Nafisi argues, the study of literature was a safeguard against falling into the same trap. As she told her university class, “A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals. ... Empathy lies at the heart of GATSBY, like so many other great novels — the biggest sin is to be blind to others' problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.”

Nafisi's compelling story illustrates one of the great reasons that we need art and literature in our lives. Interestingly, C. S. Lewis made much the same point in an essay titled “Christianity and Culture,” even though he was writing, of course, from a different perspective than the secular professor who taught in a Muslim country. Lewis wrote that culture may teach us truths about the world that point us toward the God of all truth. “Culture,” he wrote, “is a storehouse of the best (sub-Christian) values.” He went on to explain that while these values cannot by themselves save anyone, they can help us reach a greater understanding of what salvation is, why we need it, and how to find it. In fact, literature had played a crucial part in Lewis's own conversion; as he quipped in his autobiography, “A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.”

The arts can never be a substitute for faith, though some have tried to make them so. But while we should always be discerning in our viewing and reading — I'm not recommending anyone read LOLITA — the arts can guide us more deeply into faith. And they can reach people whom a conventional presentation of the Gospel may never reach — even a secret reading group in Tehran, searching for truth in a wasteland.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (Random House, 2003). Read the first chapter here.

• Azar Nafisi, “The Books of Revolution,” Wall Street Journal, 22 June 2003.

• Barbara Crossette, “Scheherazade: Feminist Icon?“ Beliefnet, 15 December 1999.

• Jonathan Curiel, “Iranian rebel made room for 'Lolita',” San Francisco Chronicle, 2 February 2004.

• S. Lewis, “Christianity and Culture” in The Seeing Eye (Ballantine Books, 1967).

• Steven Garber, “Good Books, Bad Books,” BreakPoint WorldView, January/February 2003.

• Myron Magnet, “What Use Is Literature?“ City Journal, Summer 2003.

• Wesley Hurd, “After Virtue: The Darkness Rises,” McKenzie Study Center, February 1995.

• David Kirby, “Theory in chaos,” Christian Science Monitor, 27 January 2004.

• Peter J. Leithart, “Jane Austen, Public Theologian,” First Things, January 2004.

• James M. Kushiner, Creed & Culture: A Touchstone Reader (ISI Books, 2003).

• Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live? (Tyndale, 1999). See especially chapters 41-45.

• The BreakPoint “Christians in the Arts“ kit includes It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God by Ed Bustard (editor), William Edgar, Makoto Fujimura, and David Giardinieare (Square Halo Books, 2000), and Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts by Steve Turner (InterVarsity Press, 2001). Both are great resources for Christians involved or interested in the arts.

• Visit BreakPoint's Christians in the Arts page for more resources and links. Also visit the Wilberforce Forum page on the arts.

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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There is a vacuum at the heart of our culture. Saul Bellow argued in his 1976 Noble Laureate lecture: “The intelligent public is waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, and social theory and what it cannot hear from pure science: a broader, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are, and what this life is for. If writers do not come into the center, it will not be because the center is pre-empted; it is not.” Very simply stated, there is no center to hold things together. Or to put it differently, there is no over-arching story to life by which all the particulars can be interpreted. The pursuit of knowledge without knowing who we are or why we exist, combined with a war on our imaginations by our entertainment industry, leaves us at the mercy of power with no morality. May I illustrate this?

On many different occasions while I was driving and listening to music, every now and then a piece would come on that I found either unmusical or jarring. I would shut the radio off. But then one day I was taken to see a play called The Phantom of the Opera. Suddenly I realized that some of the music I had not quite enjoyed was from this play. I was amazed at the difference knowing the story made, whenever I heard the music subsequently. In fact the music in some portions is utterly magnificent. The love songs, the discourses, yes, even the arguments made sense when you know the story. Life needs a story for one to understand the details. Life needs to hold together at the center if we are to reach to distant horizons. But our culture owns neither a story nor holds at the center.

If such is the reality of our culture, where does that leave us? The challenge, as I see it, is this: How do you communicate to a generation that hears with its eyes and thinks with its feelings?

Ironically, postmodernism may be one of the most opportune thought patterns presented to us for the propagation of the gospel because in a sense, it has cleared the playing field. All disciplines have lost their “final authority.” The hopes that modernity had brought, the triumph of “Reason” and “Science,” which many thought would bring the utopia, have failed in almost every respect. With all of our material gains, there is still a hunger for the spiritual. In virtually every part of the world, students linger long after every session to talk and plead for answers to their barren lives. All the education one gets does not diminish that search for inner coherence and a story-line for one’s own life.

As much as postmodernism has confused language and definitions, there is a yearning that the postmodernist’s own cavalier attitude does not weaken. Moreover, there is indeed a story and one who stands at the center who answers this yearning. Only in the gospel message that culminates in worship is there coherence -- which in turn brings coherence within the community of believers, where both individuality and community are affirmed. The worship of the living God is what ultimately binds the various inclinations of the heart and gives them focus. A worshipping community in spirit and in truth binds the diversity of our culture, the diversity of our education, the diversity of our backgrounds, and brings us together into a corporate expression of worship.

With all that the cultural terrain presents to us, the injunction that “to find one’s self, one must lose one’s self,” contains a truth any seeker of self-fulfillment needs to grasp. This is a reminder the Church must keep in mind, too. Apart from the Cross of Jesus Christ, I know of no other hope. The songwriter said it simply: We’ve a story to tell to the nations. The last stanza of that great hymn says:

We’ve a Savior to show to the nations

Who the path of sorrow hath trod,

That all of the world’s great peoples

Might come to the truth of God.

For the darkness shall turn to dawning,

And the dawning to noon-day bright,

And Christ’s great kingdom shall come to earth,

The kingdom of love and light

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Copyright © 2007 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was added to HolwickID #26169]

Why would well-heeled folks dress up to attend a fancy gathering where they could admire a urinal? Because it's art, of course! Or, at least, so they think.

This spring's Dada exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., celebrates what the WASHINGTON POST describes as “the most radical, irreverent, rule-breaking movement in the history of Western art.”

In case you're unfamiliar, the term DADA means exactly what it sounds like: nonsense. As H. R. Rookmaaker described it, Dada “was a nihilistic creed of disintegration, showing the meaninglessness of all Western thought, art, morals, traditions.” It raises the common to the level of the revered. Hence, Marcel Duchamp sticks a urinal on a wall and titles it “Fountain.”

It's odd that the movement's fans laud it as great art, because Dada by definition seeks the demise of art. Echoing Ayn Rand's THE FOUNTAINHEAD, Nathanael Blake writes at TOWNHALL.COM, “to abolish art, you declare a manufactured urinal to be a masterpiece.”

Some say the Dada movement continued the destruction of art that began with cubism, which preceded it. German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters said he built “new things ... out of fragments.” POST writer Michael O'Sullivan describes Dada as “a putting back together of a broken, senseless world [after World War I], only not with the glue of logic, and not in any sense back to the way things were.”

And there, you see, is the problem. Dada sees the fragmentation of the world — and celebrates that brokenness. But true artists “do not merely reflect the world's brokenness,” writes Erik Lokkesmoe in BREAKPOINT WORLDVIEW magazine. “The truth-telling artists, rather, also remind us there is more to the story ... and call us to rise from our defensive crouch to again pursue the faith, hope, and love that abide even in the valley of death.”

“In every time and place and in every culture,” writes Jerry Eisley, founder of the Washington Arts Group, “art has ultimately flowed from worship.” However, artists since the early twentieth century have abandoned the “idea of an ideal measure of goodness and truth linked with beauty.” The splintering and extreme individualism that characterize modern art are indicative of the spirit of the postmodern age. Yes, this world is broken, but the role of the artist is to point us toward wholeness.

Art is not dead, however, nor has the Church abandoned it, as illustrated by the resurgence of Christians in the arts — people like Lokkesmoe and Eisley. And another believer whose art flows from her worship of God is Kim Daus-Edwards. Kim's latest work is her book of photographs, FORCE OF THE SPIRIT, that “represents a surrender to the idea of the holy through the medium of photography.” These black-and-white images are coupled with Scripture and draw in the viewer to meditate on universal truths. “Even though we may turn away from it, the Spirit's power is ever-present and emerges regularly in our lives,” she says.

The world may be broken and seem random, but that is not the end of truth. And true art points toward the ultimate restoration of our fallen existence. Too bad the National Gallery of Art doesn't realize that.

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Copyright (c) 2006 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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The controversy over the casting of actor CHAD ALLEN in the lead role of the movie THE END OF THE SPEAR continues to grow -- and rightfully so. THE END OF THE SPEAR is a retelling of the story of the martyrdom of missionaries Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, Roger Youderian, and Ed McCully by Waodani tribesmen in Ecuador in 1956 -- and many Christians have been eagerly awaiting the film's release.

This is one of the classic narratives of Christian missions. Eventually, the widows of these five missionaries led the majority of the Waodani to faith in Christ, ending decades of tribal killings. Steve Saint, the son of Nate Saint, maintains a ministry among the Waodani even now, after having been “adopted” by Mincaye, the very tribesman who killed his father.

The story of the five missionary martyrs and their families has been recounted in several books and films -- most famously Elisabeth Elliot's two books, SHADOW OF THE ALMIGHTY and THROUGH GATES OF SPLENDOR. Generations of young evangelicals have drawn courage and inspiration from these testimonies, and the larger story of the evangelization of the Waodani people.

This account is a precious stewardship, as are the lives of all involved. I had the honor of sharing dinner with Steve Saint and Mincaye a few years ago during a Shepherd's Conference at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. Their testimony is one of the most powerful affirmations of the power of the Gospel I have ever heard. I was greatly moved by meeting with them and I had looked to the release of the film with great hope.

Thus, the release of THE END OF THE SPEAR has been met with much enthusiasm. The movie was produced by EVERY TRIBE ENTERTAINMENT and has been received well by critics. So, what is the controversy all about?

The actor chosen to play both Nate and Steve Saint in the movie is Chad Allen, an actor well known to American television viewers for his roles in ST. ELSEWHERE, OUR HOUSE, and DR. QUINN: MEDICINE WOMAN. But Chad Allen is also known for something else -- his very public homosexual activism. As a matter of fact, he has been on the cover of THE ADVOCATE, the leading homosexual news magazine, at least three times. He also staged Terence McNally's play, CORPUS CHRISTI, which portrays Christ as a homosexual involved in a homoerotic dynamic with his disciples.

What were they thinking? Beyond this, Allen (whose real name is Chad Allen Lazzari) also speaks straightforwardly about his syncretistic faith, freely mixing elements of Christianity, Native American spirituality, Buddhism, etc. When I appeared with him on LARRY KING LIVE Tuesday night, I found him to be personally friendly and engaging, but I was not surprised to hear him speak of his own personal religion -- a religion that excludes God's commandments concerning sexuality. “I have a deep relationship with God of my understanding. It's very powerful, and it's taken its own shape and form. And I am very much at peace in the knowledge that in my heart God created this beautiful expression of my love,” he told the CNN audience.

Here's how Mr. Allen described his process of moral decision-making: “These days I judge all of my actions by my relationship with God of my understanding. It is a deep-founded, faith-based belief in God based upon the work that I've done growing up as a Catholic boy and then reaching out to Buddhism philosophy, to Hindu philosophy, to Native American beliefs and finally as I got through my course with addiction and alcoholism and finding a higher power that worked for me.” That's not a convenient disclosure on national television just days before the film is released, and Mr. Allen's appearance offered yet another opportunity to witness his advocacy for homosexuality. He went so far as to suggest that his opportunity in this film represents a form of “bridge-building” between Christians and homosexuals: “You know, I made this movie with a group of conservative Christians who do not agree with my expression of sexuality. But we said to each other, I will walk with you accepting your differences, and we can create together. I will give you your space to respect you fully. They don't need to take away from my freedom, I don't need to take away from theirs. And I am so proud to have done that. That's the kind of bridge-building I think we can get to.” What should we make of all this? Should Christians see the film, boycott the film, or what? Some thoughts:

First, Christians must have the cultural maturity to know that many of the most famous and influential producers of cultural materials, whether in literature, art, or entertainment, have been homosexuals. This does not mean that we cannot enjoy their music, art, or performances. Christians start from the presupposition that all humans are sinners, and that every artistic endeavor is marred by sin in both its conception and its demonstration.

Second, Christians must learn the discipline of cultural discernment based upon Christian truth. We must learn to engage the culture in a way that is both honest and missiological -- and we must work hard to develop a mind that brings all things under subjection to Christ, including our entertainment preferences and choices.

Third, we must avoid hypocrisy. We should not pick and choose recklessly as we condemn or praise without any obvious tie to biblical truth. We must not condemn publicly what we enjoy privately. We must not assert matters of taste as matters of principle.

Fourth, we must understand the nature of the art form and learn how to discriminate on the basis of an informed cultural understanding, not a knee-jerk reaction. Accordingly, we must understand that the very nature of acting, whether on stage or on screen, is based upon the ability of the actor to make the audience see the character portrayed, not the actor, in the performance.

That said, this last point is the real problem when it comes to Chad Allen. Every Tribe Entertainment has chosen an actor -- perhaps even THE actor -- least likely to be able to make us forget him and see Nate Saint. Chad Allen's activism is what many audience members will see, not Nate and Steve Saint.

Christians loved the film CHARIOTS OF FIRE, but the lead role of Eric Liddell was played by Ian Charleston, a gay man. Another great performance in that film was given by Sir John Gielgud, a homosexual man who was probably the greatest Shakespearean actor of the last century. Similarly, the role of Gandalf in THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy was played by Sir Ian McKellen, who has also been known as a homosexual activist. Yet, I was not aware of these identifications as I viewed these movies. Thus, the associations never crossed my mind.

Careful thinking is required here. We do not know what sexual sins or sins of other sorts may characterize so many of the actors, actresses, singers, music writers, authors, musicians, painters, sculptors, or directors we enjoy and appreciate. Christians are not called to conduct investigative hearings on such matters, and we begin with the assumption that all these, like ourselves, are sinners.

Furthermore, we are not required to enjoy or appreciate as artists only those who are Christians. Yet, we should learn to look for the connections between worldview and art that always underlie a work or performance.

So, what of THE END OF THE SPEAR? Put bluntly, I believe that the makers of this movie made a very reckless decision in casting Chad Allen as Nate and Steve Saint. Given the publicity of Chad Allen's activism and the intensity of his mission to normalize homosexuality -- a mission clearly articulated on his Web site -- it is hard, if not impossible, to suspend belief and see him as a missionary martyr for the Gospel. The distance between Nate Saint and Chad Allen is just too great. This mistake is compounded by the fact that this activism is so well known and well documented -- it's what Chad Allen makes central to his own identity.

In learning cultural discernment, Christians must learn to make decisions about a movie like THE END OF THE SPEAR. In this case, the problem was unnecessary. This controversy is over a member of the cast, not the foundational story or the larger shape of the project. It could -- and should -- have been so easily avoided.

There is an even bigger and more important issue, of course. How will this film deal with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the message that took the missionaries to Ecuador and transformed the Waodani?

When brazen thieves made off with Edvard Munch’s THE SCREAM and MADONNA two years ago, I wanted to join the search. The thought of adding Munch’s works to the secret galleries of art forever lost was upsetting to say the least. I pictured clumsy men dragging irreplaceable works through sullied alleyways and destructive elements. Like most, I dreaded the worst; valuables cannot be trusted in the hands of thieves.

Of course, these men were conscious that they had in their possession something of value. (If the paintings had meant nothing to them, they would never have been worth stealing.) With the rest of the world, the thieves were well aware of the nature of the items they held in their hands. (At the time of the burglary “The Scream” was estimated at $75 million and “Madonna” at $15 million.) But for them “value” took on an entirely different meaning. In the hands of thieves, beauty is something to be exploited. It is smuggled into a dark underground and bartered for in secret. Its true value has been exchanged for something lesser.

Since the beginning of time, God has set his glory before the world. He has shown us his faithfulness, his goodness, his grandeur. He has placed his countenance upon us and trusted us with his Name. He sent his Son to be with us and offered the assurance of new life. And repeatedly, we have taken his Name and exchanged it for something lesser. We have dragged it through sullied alleyways and destructive elements, holding this treasure like thieves, having lost the true value of all we hold. We follow God not as God but as something smaller -- something exploited for pride or held as personal virtue.

When Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all of the vendors and money changers, he said in person what God had proclaimed for years. “Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?” (Jeremiah 7:11). Jesus not only addressed the merchants, whose eyes were too focused on wages, but he denounced leaders and authorities, and pilgrims who had lost their footing. Thus, the prophet from Nazareth overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and he pronounced the words of God one more time: “It is written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a ‘den of robbers’” (Mark 11:17).

God’s Name cannot be trusted in hands of thieves -- of this He is well aware. Yet even so, He continues to place it before us:

For this is what the high and lofty one says -- he who lives forever, whose name is holy:

“I live in a high and holy place,

but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit,

to revive the spirit of the lowly

and to revive the heart of the contrite.

I will not accuse forever,

nor will I always be angry,

for then the spirit of man would grow faint before me --

the breath of man that I have created...

I have seen his ways, but I will heal him;

I will guide him and restore comfort to him.”

(Isaiah 57:15-18)

Into our grubby hands and deceptive hearts God continues to place his Spirit. Though we behave like thieves, we are trusted with treasure.

To the delight of art aficionados across the world, Edvard Munch’s stolen masterworks were recently brought home. There had been speculation that the thieves had burned the paintings to escape the police search, but fortunately, they did not. The frames were smashed in the getaway, but the pictures for the most part were returned unharmed. They remain again in loyal hands.

On the contrary, all of the riches of the glory of God have been placed in hands that are prone to exploit his mercy, abuse his Name, and exchange his glory for something lesser. But even a den of robbers cannot stop the work of God. As Christ drove out the deceit of the temple so he continues to drive away the lies that block us from seeing all that exists in our hands. The house of the Father is open to all, and we are not thieves but children.

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Copyright © 2006 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Those of you who have seen Barcelona’s Temple Sagrada Familia know how very difficult it is to describe to those who have not. The architect at whose feet the acclaim is laid for this gargantuan eighteenth-century cathedral was the renowned Antoni Gaudi. There are twelve bell towers, averaging three hundred feet in height, and six domes, the highest of them eventually culminated in a 550-foot cross. As for the massive facades, the artwork gets so cluttered and detailed that it is impossible to study it without a book and even a magnifying glass. One stands rather dumbfounded by the sheer imposition upon the eye in the midst of such garish grandeur. If size is beauty, everything in the vicinity of it is ugly. If architecture is supreme, everything around it pales. If the test behind it were biblical, the amalgam of the sacred and the profane is dreadful. If beauty were the question, there would be extremes of praise or denunciation. That is what stirred my mind into wondering what it is about art that makes it so potent, yet so difficult for us to agree upon.

It was Dostoyevsky who, with the insight of a genius and an eye for the future, talked of the enormous power of art. He recognized the breadth from which art draws and the depth to which it penetrates. From the intellectual power of literary works and the creative powers of the visual, the arts have fulfilled his prediction, for he once said that first art would imitate life, then life will imitate art, and then finally, life will draw the very reason for its existence from the arts. Today, the breadth of art that permeates the air in its most popular forms is disorienting, and there is a sadness to it all because art, I believe, is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. The psalms of David, the proverbs of Solomon, the stories that are woven through Scripture, the hymns that have enriched the church, and the colors that surround our existence all speak of a God who revels in beauty. But if we pause long enough we may also see his tremendous caution in reminding us to differentiate between ends and means. God warned us not to make a graven image because the object soon replaces the subject and the means can easily become the ends.

And how terrible it is when the vision of the Creator is lost and a self-deifying visionary becomes the interpreter of beauty. The person, the interpretation, and the very means of art then get translated into a way of life. Contrast this degenerative descent of art with the noble heights that it can reach. I think of the many great productions that have come in film and in song, productions that also engulfed the viewer, but with the view to making us better people. That may be the key. It is not so much that a quotient for beauty has been lost, but that the inner eye to discern truth and betterment has been lost.

Eugene Peterson tells the story of the time he was an assistant pastor at a church in New York City. The caretaker was a man by the name of Willie Ossa, a very outspoken skeptic. But Ossa also happened to be an artist. He asked Peterson if he would sit as his subject for a portrait. Week after week they would set a time to proceed with the painting. Ossa told Peterson that he would not let him see it until he finished the work. But one day the artist’s wife came into the room and shrieked when she saw the painting, saying that it had no resemblance to the subject. All along, the artist had purposefully drawn a hideous caricature of Peterson. His reason was to remind the young pastor that if the love of God ever left his life, this is what he would look like.

That is a grim reminder both to artists and their subjects. As I think back upon Temple Sagrada Familia, I remind myself that millions have never seen this work of Antoni Gaudi. But in speaking they use its homonym -- a word that sounds similar to another -- the English word “gaudy,” which means something showy, tasteless and tawdry, glitter without worth. The wrongly informed person has sometimes thought that this word had its root in the word “God,” as they are homonyms, too -- a small difference maybe in sound, but a worldview of a difference in meaning. Ideas misconstrued do lose their significance. Art misconceived loses its way.

In that sense Dostoyevsky, too, has given us a fair warning. Art has lost its way because humanity has lost its way and each now imitates the other, drawing the reason for its existence from a lost vision for life and beauty. I pray that Christian musicians and artists will blaze the trail for recovering the true, the good, and the beautiful. The good news is that some are doing just that, leaving many moved beyond words to a deeper hunger for God. That is the unique gift an artist can give to humanity. May they point us all in that direction.

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Copyright © 2007 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

The paintings are vibrant with color — brilliant slashes of red, yellow, and aqua. The artist’s best work hangs in a gallery at Salisbury University in Maryland. Who created these abstract masterpieces? A dog named Sammy.

Sammy’s trainer, Mary Stadelbacher, taught Sammy to paint — holding a brush in his teeth — to raise funds for her dog-training academy.

An art-lover who spent $350 on a Sammy original told the ASSOCIATED PRESS: “There are people who make a lot of money to make paintings that aren’t as intriguing as what [Sammy has] done.”

Sadly, she’s right. As a BREAKPOINT blogger put it, Sammy’s paintings raise “an interesting question about what constitutes art. There ought to be an objective standard for calling something art, right? Or do you think I am barking up the wrong tree?”

To answer that question, we must understand that art expresses a view of the world, a philosophy.

Imagine we’re touring an imaginary art museum. Beginning in the medieval section, we see figures that are stiff and formal, set against gold backgrounds. This is art expressing an otherworldly philosophy of life.

Next comes the Reformation. Figures begin to look like real individuals instead of symbols. Reformation artists believed God could be represented not just by icons but by paintings of real human beings, who are made in His image.

Next we come to the Enlightenment. Paintings show respectable figures in fashionable dress. Landscapes consist of neat, orderly fields — nature under the dominion of reason.

But in the next room, the plowed fields give way to craggy mountains. Romanticism in art celebrates wild, untamed nature, the Noble Savage, ancient legends.

Finally we approach the room housing modern art, beginning with Impressionism, when art was taken over by subjectivist philosophies. Definitions of art shifted from the subject matter being portrayed to the way light strikes the artist’s eye; from great themes of human drama to daubs of paint on canvas; from objective standards of beauty to the artist’s psyche.

Expressionism and Surrealism probed deeper into subjective experience. Eventually art lost sight of any objective standards of form and beauty. Art became defined as whatever an artist does.

But without objective standards of form and beauty, even unformed, random marks on canvas — not unlike the dabblings of a dog — can be regarded as art.

Art used to be regarded as the expression of a civilization’s highest ideals. Great painters shared a communal vision of the good and beautiful. But today art has become so subjective that many people cannot tell the difference between works that have artistic merit and works that don’t. A museum might exhibit a paper plate next to a Rembrandt — who is to say which is art?

Christians ought to care about art because God calls us to lead the way in renewing our culture. Artistic talent is a gift of God, to be cultivated for the service of God and our neighbor.

So while we may regard the “work” of canine Picassos as amusing, we should spend our money supporting those humans who are called to create, as the Scripture puts it, “for the glory of God and for beauty.”

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Copyright (c) 2007 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

How do you justify art and the humanities?

That is the provocative question asked in a recent New York Times column by Stanley Fish. His answer was simple: You do not have to. “They are,” he wrote, “their own good.” I tend to agree, but I reach my conclusion from an entirely different perspective than he does.

Fish, the famous postmodernist professor, was unhappy about a government report on the state of higher education in New York State, in which “all the emphasis is on science, partnerships with industry, and advances in technology.”

Fish went on to add, “If there is to be a brave new world in New York higher education, it doesn’t look as if the humanities and the arts will be a significant part of it.”

I would say that holds true for schools across the country. Think about it: How often have you heard anyone say that our kids need to do better at math and science? Often. But, when was the last time you heard it said that they need to study more art, or literature, or music?

You get the idea.

But as Fish acknowledges, his line of thinking raises a question: Why do we need to teach the arts in schools? As a secular humanist, he says, it would be easy for him to go along with the traditional humanistic idea that the arts and humanities “ennoble” us by inspiring us to want to be like the great heroes portrayed in art and literature.

But Fish cannot buy into that. “If it were true,” he notes dryly, “the most generous, patient, good-hearted, and honest people on earth would be the members of literature and philosophy departments, who spend every waking hour with great books and great thoughts. And,” Fish continued, “as someone who’s been there (for 45 years), I can tell you it just isn’t so.”

Moreover, Fish believes that that is exactly “how it should be. Teachers of literature and philosophy are competent in a subject, not in a ministry. It is not the business of the humanities to save us.”

I agree, but let me illustrate why. You may remember a much acclaimed movie a few years back called The Pianist. The film told how music transformed a Nazi officer into a man willing to feed and shelter a Jewish musician. That was not an accurate picture, however. In real life, the officer who saved the musician did so not because he loved music, but because he was “an ardent Catholic who abhorred Nazism.” Many Nazis loved music, but music itself did not “ennoble” them. It just gave them a welcome respite from murdering Jews and other innocent victims. [see HolwickID #16809]

So what are the arts and humanities good for? Here is where I think the Christian worldview provides an answer that Fish cannot grasp. They teach that God made humans creative beings, like Himself. The works of art we create — sculpture, literature, drama — reflect the glory and beauty of the Creator of life. This is what gives the arts their intrinsic value. Any beneficial effect that they might have on human thinking — and usually they do have such effects — is a good thing, but it is not why we create, and it does not add or detract from the value of art.

No, the humanities cannot save us, but because their mere existence speaks of and glorifies our Creator, they are more than justified.

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Copyright (c) 2008 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

In a letter dated September 6, 1955, Flannery O’Connor confessed that though the truth “does not change according to our ability to stomach it,” there are periods in the lives of us all, even of the saints, “when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive.”(1)

I took solace recently in these unapologetic lines from a writer who viewed her faith not as a substitute for seeing, but as the light by which she saw. As I stared at a painting of Mary and the infant Jesus by Giovanni Bellini, I was unexpectedly but entirely disturbed by the story of the Incarnation. While the message and mystery of the Incarnation is a hope I expect to engage over the course of a lifetime, and the character and complexity of a Father who sends a Son into the world exudes a depth I hope forever to plumb, in front of me was suddenly a different side of the story. Theologically, I was asking questions of the Incarnation I had never uttered. Would we label a father “loving” who gives a teenage girl a task that devastates her future, destroys her reputation, and in the end, mortally wounds her with grief? What kind of God asks for servants like Mary?

Madeleine L’Engle reflects on faith and art with words O’Connor would have affirmed and I in that moment embodied. She reminds us that in all artful learning “either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we are asked to endure, we who are children of God by adoption and grace.”(2) I have recalled and retold the Christmas story for years, but I had never remembered it like this. In the light and shadows of Bellini’s interpretation of this biblical scene, I was startled as I remembered in the call of Mary to bear the Son of God the severe cost of obedience and the complete disruption of a life.

In fact, it is fairly easy to rush to the theological implications of the texts that depict the role of Mary in the life of Jesus. We quickly move from Mary’s acceptance of Gabriel’s words to the man who preformed miracles and calmed storms in a way that made him seem motherless. While the song of Mary recorded in Luke 1:47-55 slows us down and bids us to consider the young mother in her own words, it is easy to assume in the ease of her praise of the Almighty a sense of ease for her situation, to add to her cries of joy the assumption that she never wept. Mary sings: “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

Luke depicts an image of Mary that is hard to ignore, and Bellini follows his example. With one hand, Mary holds Jesus securely to her side, while with the other she gently holds his foot in a way that seems to communicate both her willingness to share the child with the world and her suspicion that he will spring from her care to lift the lowly as she herself has been lifted. Mary is seated poised, stoic, and adult-like, which in some ways seems far from the childlike Mary we encounter in Luke, and in other ways seems to reflect the wisdom she was able to express far beyond her years. As one pledged to be married in first century Nazareth, Mary would have been little more than a child herself, a child who was perhaps able to respond to Gabriel the way she did because “she had not lost her child’s creative acceptance of the realities moving on the other side of the everyday world.”(3) Bellini’s Mary looks far more weathered, serious, and austere, as if she is somehow aware of the fate of the child in her arms and her helplessness to save him. In the face of the girl who was somehow able to see beyond the great risk of being pregnant and unwed, the weight of her yoke is here apparent in her tired expression.

In front of this picture, I could not help but remain at the level of the servant and the severe cost of discipleship. Yet the longer I stared, the more grace seemed to permeate my deepest reservations about the nature of God’s calling and the often unchallenged images of a Father with strange ways of showing love. The longer I considered the song of Mary in light of all she would endure, the more I heard in my disturbance the cry of Christ himself: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” How often it seems that the glimpses of God’s light which stay with us longest are not the glimpses that are blinding and certain in their power, but those which are compelling, mysterious, and steady in their invitation, emerging out of dark questions and disturbing moments.

In fact, there are far worse things than being disrupted by the one who calls us to follow, the once-fragile child who now asks that we put our hands on the plow and not look back, let the dead bury the dead, take up our own crosses, and bring with him good news to the poor. It is far worse to be so at ease that we do not receive the graceful disturbance of a Father who would offer his only Son, and a Son who would go willingly. It is far worse to be so familiar with the story that we fail to see the Mighty One disturbing our world, lifting up the lowly, sending the rich away empty, and filling the hungry with good things.

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1. Flannery O’Connor, THE HABIT OF BEING, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1988), 100.

2. Madeleine L’Engle, WALKING ON WATER: REFLECTIONS ON FAITH AND ART (New York: Bantam, 1982), 30.

3. Ibid., 18.

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Copyright © 2008 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Philip Yancey writes that when the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci went to China in the sixteenth century, he brought along with him samples of religious art to illustrate the Christian story for people who had never heard it. The Chinese readily adopted portraits of the Virgin Mary holding her child, but when he produced the paintings of the crucifixion and tried to explain that the Godchild had grown up only to be executed, the audience reacted with revulsion and horror.

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Philip Yancey, THE JESUS I NEVER KNEW, p. 33.

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky said that “Beauty will save the world.” Reflecting on those words in his 1970 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn asked, “What sort of a statement is that? ... How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything?”

This is a legitimate question in a sin-cursed world wracked with natural disasters, human violence and deceit, disease, war, famine, cancer, and mental illness. In the face of such evil and suffering, beauty can seem quaint and powerless, at best a distraction and certainly not a solution. And yet, beauty is particularly effective in bringing joy and appreciation to the forefront of our lives, introducing us to names from the past we might otherwise not know, and placing the image of God in men and women on full display.

Take Vincent Van Gogh, the 19th-century Dutch painter of glowing flowers and heavenly lights whose art so starkly contrasted with his troubled life. Writing in The Wall Street Journal recently, John Miller argued that Van Gogh’s art testifies to a stubborn faith, even during his darkest moments. Not only is that faith evident in the Dutch master’s work, it is evident in his words.

In a letter to his brother two years before his death, Van Gogh wrote that he still had a tremendous need for religion, “so I go outside at night to paint the stars.” The result of this routine was a painting recognized as a masterpiece. The Starry Night, which currently hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, exhibits the ethereal light, the “bold color and coarse brushwork,” that would immortalize the name of Van Gogh after his untimely death. It is also what Os Guinness, when quoting sociologist Peter Berger, calls a “signal of transcendence.” In other words, stars mean something.

Miller points out that Van Gogh’s several starry-themed paintings include Christian imagery that is easy to miss: churches and convents, crosses, and perhaps even a reference to the twelve disciples.

Though Van Gogh wasn’t a religious painter in a strict sense, his faith, Miller argues, “flows as a powerful undercurrent” in all his art. It also shaped his life. At one point, Van Gogh even aimed to be ordained as a minister, but his quirks sabotaged his theological education and many of his relationships, so he decided to become a self-taught painter instead.

The young artist produced 900 paintings, only one of which actually sold during his lifetime. His mental health continued to decline, eventually devolving into the well-known incident where he cut off his own ear, before he finally committed suicide.

Today, historians and psychologists speculate that Vincent Van Gogh suffered from manic depression or bipolar disorder. His life is a sad mixture of beauty and psychosis over which someone might scribble, as his fellow painter Edvard Munch did over his own iconic work, The Scream, “[this] can only have been painted by a madman.” The reason we know Van Gogh’s name, however, is not his madness but his eye for beauty and the ability to express it on canvas. As one documentary put it, Vincent was at his sanest when he was painting.

In his Nobel Prize speech, Solzhenitsyn said that “a work of art bears within itself its own verification.”

... those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force — they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.

For millennia, Christians have celebrated truth, goodness, and beauty as transcendent testimonies to God’s existence and character. While it is possible to deny truth and goodness, Solzhenitsyn thought beauty had an “irrefutable” quality that “forces even an opposing heart to surrender.” Beauty arrests us, cuts through our objections as the light of the stars cut through Van Gogh’s troubled mind, and leaves us blessedly vulnerable to God’s grace, even in this dark and fallen world.

In his song, “Count the Stars,” my friend Josh Bales writes, “On my darkest night a million beams of light ask me to believe that your promise is like a starlit sky/ bigger than my dreams/ So in my doubting dark I count the stars.”

Truth, wrote the Apostle John, is a person who has Himself faced suffering and will, in the end, answer all questions and make all things new. If the vision that finally captivated a broken Dutch painter is that same Person, then Dostoevsky was right. Beauty will save the world. In fact, He has.

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Copyright (c) 2023 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

How could this Vincent van Gogh's untold history actually have something to do with Jesus Christ? We were always taught in school that van Gogh was a crazed, drunken, painter who eventually committed suicide. But there is a beautiful story interwoven in van Gogh’s life, that we were never told about...so read on and be surprised (by the way, his name is pronounced “van Goth”, not “van Go”...yeah, they even taught us how to pronounce his name wrong in school...)

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born March 30, 1853 in the Netherlands (he was Dutch) to a Dutch Reformed Pastor by the name of Theodorus van Gogh. To understand the story of van Gogh, and his struggles, the basis must be set that he grew up in a predominately Catholic area, and that though his father was a Dutch Reformed minister (good right?), wrong, the Dutch Reformed Church was mainly a government church, controlled by many laws, with an approach to God through legalism, and not Grace. On a side note, the Dutch Reformed Church ceased to exist in the year 2004, when it merged with the Lutheran churches. Again, one must keep in mind the Catholic influence in the area, and a legalistic pastor for a father, while reading the rest of van Gogh’s history, to truly understand his struggles.

From an early age, van Gogh wanted to be a pastor, not like his father, but one that preached the true Gospel of Grace of Jesus Christ. Van Gogh truly had a burning within his soul to share the Word of the Lord. Don’t believe me? Read the letters to his brother (link below). Van Gogh was largely influenced by the preachings of the famous pastor, Charles Spurgeon.

First, van Gogh was forced to attended a Catholic school for his education...it is to be noted that van Gogh stayed true to his beliefs even after this, but it must have started a struggle within his soul, over what he was taught was true, and what he believed to be true, especially at such a young age. He was later pressured by his father to go to Theological College and become a pastor as his father, but van Gogh rejected this based on his Biblical beliefs and the conflicting teachings of Theology.

At age 20, van Gogh worked as an art dealer, quite successful, and making an above average living for the time. He fell in love with his land lady’s daughter, and proposed to her...which she promptly rejected, telling van Gogh she had a secret lover she had never told him about. Quite possibly the first notch in van Gogh’s soul that would come back to haunt him. For the time, van Gogh would have been considered a “good catch”...both historians and family alike recount that this was possibly the happiest, most successful time for van Gogh.

Although van Gogh was a successful art dealer, he soon gave that up (and his lucrative paycheck), to go and teach at a boys school for Rev. William Stokes. Van Gogh still felt his calling to be a pastor. Being able to share the gospel with the young boys, van Gogh then joined with another pastor, Rev. T. Slade Jones at another boys school. Van Gogh spent his time between the two boys schools, teaching and sharing the gospel. Once again it was said that this was the happiest time in van Gogh’s life.

Historians note that van Gogh would spend hours and hours a day, reading and rereading the Bible. Van Gogh could not get enough of the Word. Again, we are never taught this in school, but van Gogh is noted with translating the Bible into other languages of the time, so the Gospel could be read by others (most people are not aware of this).

Van Gogh approached Rev. Jones one day and requested to be able to preach. Jones agreed to let van Gogh preach before their prayer meetings, of which his teachings must have been blessed, because Jones soon let van Gogh have the pulpit and begin preaching Sunday sermons in his church. Van Gogh would go on to preach at up to four churches a day, regardless of the denomination - van Gogh was one of the first “non-denominational pastors”, but he never watered down his words, regardless of where he was preaching.

(Here is van Gogh’s very first sermon, delivered in his early 20s: http://www.vggallery.com/misc/archives/sermon.htm)

Yeah, too bad there aren’t pastors like van Gogh today - he was noted to truly care for the people and to meet their needs as a pastor. His sermons were Christ-centered, and he quote much Scripture.

Van Gogh’s passion for the people, as Christ had compassion upon the multitudes, grew to where he felt a calling to be a missionary. He twice applied for missionary school and failed. One must understand missionaries of the time - for support, you had to pass the “missionary exam” of a Theological college. Although it is never noted why van Gogh failed, it could possibly have been because he answered the questions according to the Gospels, and not according to man’s teachings.

Undeterred, and with the burning of the Gospel in his heart, van Gogh voluntarily went (with no support), as a self-proclaimed missionary to the coal mining town of Borinage, Belguim. This was stated by historians to be “the most inhospitable, improvised” location in all of Western Europe. Van Gogh preached to the miners, and saw to every need they had as he possible could. He felt so desperate their plight that he gave away his own money, food and clothes to them, and slept in straw behind a Baker’s hut, because he did find himself above them, and as Christ shared in our sufferings, van Gogh felt the same calling. The Baker’s wife stated that every night she would hear van Gogh sobbing behind their house, calling out to God, interceding for the plight of the miners.

This raised the ire of the formal, government church...van Gogh was making them look bad. The formal church did little (if anything) to help the miners (let’s face it, they were considered trash by the organized church), and a pastor was to live in a home (not in straw) and receive a salary (not give it away). Jealous of van Gogh, the Church, yes “the church”, forbade him to return to the miners. The church leaders of the time are actually quoted as saying “[he] is undermining the dignity of the Priesthood.” It was also during this time that van Gogh’s own father (“the Dutch Reformed Pastor”) sought to have his own son committed to a lunatic asylum because of his beliefs in Jesus.

Now, I have to pause here for a moment and ask...does van Gogh’s story in any way resemble Jesus’ walk here on earth? Didn’t they call him “mad”, and the church of the time seek to shut him up?

Van Gogh was forced by the church to move away, and from a distance began sketching the miners, trying to raise concern to others for their plight and horrid living conditions. Rejected by the church, unable to continue in the mining villages as a missionary, van Gogh stated...”...if I cannot preach, I will paint, and every painting that I do will be for the glory to God.” Van Gogh’s aspiration, facing such rejection, was to be an “artist in the service of God.”

I will not dwell so deeply on van Gogh’s years as an artist, as there is much more history surrounding this, than is time as a pastor. However, I do need to use it to bring a conclusion to van Gogh’s story.

While studying to be an artist, he once again fell in love, and proposed marriage, but again refused (this time because he was now a pauper himself, having given all he had to the miners). This was of course the third notch on his soul.

It is somewhere at this point in his life that van Gogh lost sight of his calling. History does not state what happened, because history does not understand the calling of a pastor, and how if unfulfilled, will eat constantly at your soul.

Van Gogh fell in love a third time, with a prostitute named Sien who had a 5-year-old daughter. It is hypothesized that this began because van Gogh had compassion on them and their plight. Having been rejected twice in marriage proposals, van Gogh did not propose this third time, as he could not face rejection again. Van Gogh had a son with Sien, and they named him Willem after van Gogh.

With van Gogh unable to make a living as a painter, Sien turned back to prostitution to feed the family (unbeknownst to van Gogh). Upon the birth of their son, van Gogh did propose marriage, so that his son would have a father and not be considered illegitimate. Sien refused, probably not because of van Gogh, but because of her secret life of prostitution. Unable to live with herself of this decision, Sien took her life by drowning herself in the River Scheldt.

Sien’s daughter was then given to her mother, and Willem (van Gogh’s son), to Sien’s brother. It is believed that the children were not given to van Gogh because he could neither support himself, and was still considered a lunatic by many, based on his earlier years of preaching. Although I’ve not touched on it here, van Gogh dearly loved children, as Christ said, “...forbid them not to come to him...”.

Childless, rejected by the church, unable to be a missionary, thrice rejected in marriage, and unable to sell a painting, by this time in ill health, van Gogh turned to drinking. Van Gogh’s ill health came shortly after he left the mining town - although never fully known, it is assumed that it came from breathing the coal dust, and later aggravated by the fumes of the oil paints - which combined to cause him to have epileptic like seizures. Due to the ignorance of the time, this furthered the belief that he was “lunatic”.

Three years later, in 1886, van Gogh again fell in love a fourth time with a woman named Margot, and again proposed marriage (for the fourth time). Margot accepted, but neither parents gave approval, so the marriage could not happen. Unable to accept this, Margot attempted suicide by strychnine, but was saved when van Gogh rushed her to the hospital. Upon recovery, with no chance for marriage, the two parted ways. Van Gogh’s father, who had strongly opposed the marriage (actually all of his marriage proposals were never supported by his father), died one year later. This deeply impacted van Gogh, who, because of their difference in religious beliefs, had always been rejected by his father.

In van Gogh’s early years, he painted those in poverty, because he had compassion for them, and wanted to bring awareness to their conditions. Later in life, van Gogh’s favorite paintings were wheat fields and harvests. His final painting, “Wheat Field with Crows”, is often associated with Vincent’s first sermon, and that his sojourning upon earth was almost over, and the field was ready for harvest: The “road” was uphill, and the journey long. (Van Gogh loved to paint wheat fields because it oft reminded him of the Harvest in the Bible: http://bobbyriesterer.com/gogh/themeimages/f_0779.jpg)

No one knows why, but can only assume that his loneliness and rejection (he was ridiculed as a painter), and his rejection by the church, as well as his bouts of seizures, led to this moment - on July 27, 1890, van Gogh took his paints and his easel to the wheat field, and there shot himself in the chest. Van Gogh was only 37 years old.

The story does not end here though - there is hope - the self-inflicted gun shot was not immediately mortal...in fact, van Gogh was able to walk back to his room, where a doctor found him and contacted his brother Theo. The bullet had deflected off a rib and lodged against his spine, but no organs had been touched. Removable however was impossible due to the close proximity to the spine. For the next 29 hours, van Gogh was held in the arms of his brother Theo as they talked - van Gogh, during his life, had tried to win his brother to Christ. It is unknown what was spoken of in these final hours, however, I can only hope that van Gogh recalled his once true passion and relationship with Christ, and as he felt his life waning, came back Jesus. Why else would God have spared his life another 29 hours? It was also noted by Theo and the two physicians on hand, and van Gogh himself, that he was in little to no pain during these 29 hours.

And that my folks is the life story of van Gogh that schools will never teach. In his lifetime, only a few of his paintings made any money, and not much at that. At the time of his death, an art dealer had taken a liking to van Gogh and his paintings, having just sold several of them for quite a substantial sum...however, word of this sale would arrive after his death.

A van Gogh painting today...well, the most anyone has ever paid was $140 million dollars, and the least (that I could find) $35 million. Van Gogh would paint some 2100 paintings in his lifetime. And in his own words, “...if I cannot preach, I will paint, and every painting that I do will be for the glory to God.”

Still persecuted by the church for his Biblical preaching (can the church not forgive?), he was barred from burial in a church cemetery - which prevented him from being buried with his family. However, a smaller, more forgiving church in the adjoining town, permitted his burial. Six months later, grieving over the brother who had tried to win him for Christ, Theo died of a broken heart. Theo and Vincent had wished to be buried together, but because of the church, could not. In 1914, Theo’s still living wife, had Theo moved and buried beside his brother Vincent.

Sermon in Exodus series, #17. Exodus 25:1-9

CAMPING WITH GOD

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I. The Tabernacle doesn't thrill me.

II. God appreciates beauty.

A. Evangelicals aren't big on beauty.

B. God values beauty for beauty's sake.

C. Worshipping God involves all our senses.

III. God is holy.

A. God's presence was hidden from ordinary view.

B. Chief among them is human sin.

C. Even ordinary believers were separated from the world.

D. Separation remains a valid principle for Christians.

IV. The tabernacle had a treatment for sin.

A. The portable altar offered sacrifices to cover offenses.

B. Ultimately, the sacrificial system was inadequate.

C. Some see special symbolism in the gate.

V. Tents are temporary. John 1:14